Boringly good

I've been doing relatively useful things. I've sorted out various things and tickets for Greece, and did some shopping for nice things. Today I looked at two Edinburgh flats that were going on sale. They were both lovely and going for...

Quarter of a million pounds.

There is something wrong with this city. OK, it's true that one of them was on the Royal Mile and the other was facing Barclay Church and had four bedrooms. They were certainly exceptional. But I've looked at similar flats two years ago and I was disappointed that they went for £150k or so. If property is rising faster than any reasonable raise in income that people might achieve through salary or business, then it means the market is basically closed, and henceforth it will only transfer money from those who do productive work to a declining numbber of people who own houses.

I'd be so pleased if the market collapses. However the only way for this to happen would be if interest rates go up, so people are forced to sell for failure to pay their mortgages. Not that likely. A more sane proposal would be to tax property appreciation very heavily, say 50% - after all it's money that you get from NO productive activity, not even past productive investment, and use the money to subsidise the people who work in the service industry. After all it is they, by and large, who increase the value of housing in the city.

In other news, I've been hanging around coffee shops writing my Byzantine game. This is a board game I've been designing for some years now based on the Byzantine empire. Ideas had sort of dried up, but I've hit a new stream of creativity. I'm just waiting for the time when I'm a famous game designer and The Onion speaks of "board game obviously designed in coffee shop". Other than that I have a collection of unfinished rants.

So yes, energy and creativiity are sort of up, and desire to meet new people is sort of down. Not so good. I love spending time with those that I already have some kind of intimate connection with, gained through some very slow process of knowing and trusting, but I'm lacking the energy to approach random people in the hope that we might get along well. I may, therefore, be getting old.